News

League banners get a sporting chance outside schools

A unanimous decision by members of the Mountain View Whisman School District board will open up a couple of visible new spots for youth sports organizations to hang their registration banners.

The resolution will allow banners to be hung outside Slater School and Crittenden Middle School during sports registration periods. The board reached its decision at its Feb. 6 board meeting.

The former policy surrounding such banners, which passed last October, designated only three legal locations: Eagle Park, Rengstorff Park, and McKelvey Field. The same policy required the organizations to hand over their banners to city staff to hang in designated areas and then remove after eight weeks.

The new resolution, originally proposed by Superintendent Craig Goldman at the Jan. 23 school board meeting, opens Slater School and Crittenden Middle School as two additional designated public spaces in which the city will allow the banners as a "limited public forum."

The resolution is intended to provide Little League and other sports with wider advertisement opportunities while also preventing banners from hanging in any non-designated locations throughout the city.

Leane Reefls, sponsorship director for Mountain View Little League, spoke at the Feb. 6 school board meeting in support of the resolution.

"I'm really excited to hear that there are some other opportunities for posting registration sign-up signs," she said. "Since the city clamped down on our ability to post registration banners and get the word out, we've been trying all sorts of things ... it was just becoming more and more challenging."

She said that Mountain View Little League would benefit from access to more public spaces for banners, as they have been struggling to find effective advertising alternatives to banners.

Ken Larson, president of the Mountain View-Los Altos Girls Softball league, also spoke at the meeting to emphasize the importance of banners to support local youth sports enrollment.

"When I came on the board three years ago, I thought it was acceptable to put up banners in certain locations," Larson said. "We stopped putting up banners. Enrollment dropped because we didn't have this forum."

Larson went on to praise the new resolution and the additional legal banner locations it provides.

"Fifteen percent of our new girls that are playing for us this year found out because of the banners that were allowed to be put up," he said. "Thank you for the opportunity to put the banners up at two more sites."

Posted by Steven Nelson
a resident of Cuesta Park
on Feb 12, 2014 at 6:44 am

Welcome Katie to your second article reporting on MVWSD. It is slightly unclear here that the Eagle Park, Rengstorff Park, and McKelvey Field sites are purely city owned and controlled. The mechanism mentioned is a City one, rather than a MVWSD one. The Policy that we discussed and passed has to do with shared parkland that the schools own. You reported correctly on my position in your previous article. I think we could add several (2?) elementary sites that have high sports-league use, Bubb and Theuerkauf/Stevenson fields. "Two more sites" - but maybe when we see how well this works.
Trustee Nelson is one of five Trustees of the MVWSD. He was first elected in 2012. These opinions are his own and are not the Public Policy adopted by the Board (I'm told that's part of a mantra :)

WOW.. all thanks be unto the school district and te City for allowing the groups in town to utilize FREE SPEECH... for allowing them to actually communicate with the local folks.
We are indeed blessed.

Next thing will be for the District/City to "review" all signs and make sure that they don't offend anyone and that the "artwork" on them is appropriate, with lead free paint and non-toxic cloth or paper.
Indeed.. we are so blessed.

I agree that the article confuses the policies of the city with the policies of the school district.. The policy that was put in place in October was a city policy that had nothing to do with the school district.

Posted by Parent
a resident of Old Mountain View
on Feb 12, 2014 at 4:19 pm

This. This is how the school board wastes our money. They worry about things like this. in an age when kids are fat and sports deficient, the school board thinks it best to limit information on how to exercise, become healthy, and integrate socially... all of which sports are known to accomplish.

Of course if there where a school bond attached to the hanging of a banner, you and I both know what they would do.

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